He was right!

我的问题

Hard drive had failed OOW

我的修理方法

Repair went well.

BTW, I did not do the dual drive install, just replaced the original.

Only issue was The pointing devices acted weird and bluetooth was not behaving as expected. I posted the problem asking for solutions and someone explained that it sounded like there was something holding the mouse button and/or track pad down.

Of course I dismissed it because there was no track pad around and I was using a tested, tried and true wired mouse...

Well... I was wrong. The Mac had automatically re-connected to the last bluetooth trackpad used and a book was setting on top of it. DOH!

Now I can find the the fella's answer to apologize for blowing him off and and thank him for the advice.

我的建议

Listen to your tech neighbors